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Out of the Box: Age of Empires III Impressions

Early results are in: after playing through the single-player campaign, Age III looks to set a new standard for real-time strategy games.

It's GameSpy's policy to test games in a real-world online multiplayer setting before we assign a final review score, so it'll be a few days before our full Age of Empires III review goes live. In the meantime, we've played our Age III builds so much this past weekend that the discs sizzled when we took them out of our PCs. While we have a couple reservations, Age III looks to set some new standards for real-time strategy.

The graphics definitely help reel you in from the start. You've seen the screenshots, and yes, it really does look that good in gameplay. All but a few of the single-player campaign cutscenes are done in the game engine, which really shows off what it can do. During one sequence, some explorers look over the side of their boats into a South American jungle, where a Jaguar lurks amongst the dense trees. The trees, the shadows, and the sun-dappled jungle floor look outstanding -- it's all great stuff.

Just a couple of artillery pieces can swing a battle. Blue is outnumbered here, but the two cannons he's got can each take out several musketeers with one shot.

The combat really stands out, as well, particularly the building destruction. Razing a town has never been so satisfying, with cannonballs sheering off pieces of buildings or mortars exploding in a town center and sending chunks of the roof whirling through the air.

The gameplay, to no surprise, is solid. Age III isn't re-inventing real-time strategy, so the game is familiar and the strategies aren't that different from what's come before. But there are enough new elements to change things up and keep it fresh. The Home City concept works great: decisions about which shipments to order and when to order them is central to your strategy. And in multiplayer, carrying around your home city and developing it from one game to the next is both strategic and addictive. There are also small changes that make playing the game easier and more fun, such as the fact that you never have to rebuild your farms or that buildings can be ordered to repair themselves without using a villager to do it.

Based on our initial impressions, the game very much favors an offensive strategy. This is because home city shipments allow you to very quickly build up a huge army, and mortar artillery in the fourth age can cut through enemy buildings like butter. Although it's possible to build walls and fortifications (even massive forts, which can be key to your strategy), it seems those resources are better invested in getting to the fourth age and building heavy artillery. We'll keep playing more multiplayer to see if any one particular strategy is dominant.

As for the multiplayer experience itself, our initial tests are coming up with mixed results. First, the game setup experience could be considered a model for any multiplayer game. Everything you'd want to do is built right into a slick "Ensemble Studios Online" service. From within the game you can create an account, choose a picture for yourself, join a clan, create a buddy list, send instant messages, join chat rooms, browse games, set up a game, get ranked on any of dozens of ladders, and so on. It's all top-notch, and how games should be meant to be played online.

Unfortunately, despite the beautiful interface, so far we've had problems actually playing online against the random Ensemble people and other press who have been around. Sometimes the game lobby would behave strangely (not all the players in a game could see one another, or it wouldn't let players change their color and ready up). And once the game started, two-thirds of the time we got an immediate "Synchronization error" and crashed back to the multiplayer room.

Although our build was a final review copy, there's an auto-patching feature built-in and Ensemble is continuing to tweak the online area. We'll see if we're still having problems once the service is actually live and filled with real players. We hope that the wrinkles are ironed out, because when it works, multiplayer is a blast. Age of Empires III looks to be one of the high-water marks in PC gaming this year, maybe even reason enough to upgrade your machine. Stick around to GameSpy for a full review later this week.